The holiday season may be a time of great cheer, but it can also cause a lot of stress for your employees. Many people find the end-of-the-year brings tight deadlines, financial stress, seasonal depression, and other struggles that can put a damper on this time of year.
For businesses, a workforce filled with people feeling stressed can hinder productivity and progress. Fortunately, introducing strategies into your workplace can help mitigate these effects and create a more positive work environment for employees while also boosting morale and overall business success. Let’s look more closely at what you want to know about managing holiday stress at work.
Understanding Holiday Stress in the Workplace and Its Impact
As the year comes to an end, people might experience stress and pressure from a variety of different factors:
- The shortening days and cold temperatures are perfect for inducing seasonal depression.
- The ample time off means that work often must be completed on a tighter timeline.
- Colleagues taking time off can increase the workload on other team members.
- The holidays mean more time with family, which can be a source of stress for many.
- Holiday gift-giving can also cause financial stress.
All of these different factors can combine to make people feel sluggish and unproductive. Employees become less engaged when they find themselves perpetually worrying about other factors in their personal and professional lives. Fortunately, you can introduce some best practices to improve the workplace experience for employees and thus improve productivity.
Best Practices for Managing Holiday Stress at Work
If the holidays have begun to stress out your teams, you can use the following techniques to help them manage this load and better contribute to their jobs.
Flexible Scheduling and Time Off
Show your understanding for the stress people feel by introducing more flexible scheduling policies in your workplace. For example, you might allow people to take their lunch break to do an errand or permit people to come in a few hours early to leave a few hours early and get some of their afternoons back for holiday planning.
As a leader in the organization, taking advantage of these flexible policies personally can also make your employees feel more comfortable using them.
ASAP Payroll offers HR solutions for managing PTO and holiday scheduling. With flexible scheduling management options, it is easy to keep track of how much people work so that your payroll remains consistent and accurate.
Promoting a Supportive Work Environment
Within the workplace itself, promote open communication and mental health awareness. If you offer employee assistance programs and wellness initiatives to encourage mental health care, promote these options to your employees so they know what’s available. If you do not already offer them, see if you can incorporate them into your business benefits.
You might also consider building breaks into the day with supportive outlets for stress. For example, having a 30-minute meditation session open to everyone on Friday afternoons can highlight your business’s prioritization of mental health.
Setting Realistic Expectations
As a business manager, you also want to consider your expectations for your teams and how realistic they are given the crunch time that occurs during the holidays. If people regularly take time off or if the schedule significantly reduces world days, you can’t expect them to get the same amount of work done as they typically do. Instead, align goals and deadlines with employee abilities, including pushing less-essential elements back after the new year. Work with team members to prioritize items so they know where to focus their attention and what can be addressed after the holiday rush.
Team-building Activities and Recognition
When you have teams full of stress-out employees, it also helps to focus on team building and celebrating achievements. Foster morale and reduce people’s stress by scheduling time to reward top performers and show appreciation for everyone’s work. These types of celebrations let your employees know that you recognize their effort and value them while also allowing everyone to take time away from their desks and unwind with their coworkers.
Utilizing HR Tools to Support Stress Management and Holiday Workforce Management
To take your team’s stress-management initiatives further, you can also put your HR tools to work. Platforms like ASAP Payroll offer a wealth of resources, like our HR Library and human capital management tools that empower businesses to track employee well-being during the holidays and provide schedule management so that you can have a complete understanding of your employees’ schedules throughout the busy season. You can use these tools to create customized schedules that reflect your employee needs and have ready access to tools that make it easy to remain compliant and accurate with all your HR services.
Using these HR tools can help you maintain transparency with your employees, as they can quickly access data regarding their work and schedules. The resources and library will also make it easy to improve your efficiency during this stressful time so that payroll and scheduling issues do not compound the frustrations employees feel.
Conclusion
While the holidays can bring great joy, they can also be a source of stress for many professionals. Between family visits, gifts, seasonal changes, and stress at work, many people find the end of the year leads them burned out and overwhelmed. As a business leader, you want to help mitigate the stress so your workplace remains a productive, positive place heading into the new year.
If you are interested in learning more about how the right HR tools can help you manage employee well-being and improve stress management, come and learn more about what ASAP Payroll has to offer. With a wealth of resources and your fingertips and comprehensive services, it has never been so easy to manage your payroll and improve your HR capabilities.
Support your team during the holiday season with ASAP Payroll’s HR tools, including stress management resources and employee assistance programs. Contact us today for a demo!
